"Someone might actually check our claim of a recent government regime change in one of the relevant city-states, but we could say that your mage-school had a change in leadership and the new leader disapproved of your research?" 

"If people die about that? It seems like with compulsions and no afterlives you might end up very unwilling to kill people, and it seems like a stretch to say that an emergency teleport into your lap was an improvement on getting fired."

"...People in general will definitely take on a nontrivial risk of death to avoid being under compulsions to the wrong person, whether or not that is reasonable, and - people are certainly are less averse to killing than I would prefer. I do think something would have to go quite wrong for leadership turnover in a mage-school to kill anyone, but I would believe that it happens, especially if someone saw your unusual magical abilities as a threat to their power." 

Why would people take on a nontrivial risk of death with no afterlife to avoid being compulsioned to the wrong person????

"That works, then."

Nod. "Will your translation magic allow you to speak the language there, if it comes up? ...Actually, I am not sure what we should say about your ability to sometimes understand our language and other times not - it is not completely implausible as a Wild Gift, but Gifts are not generally so discretely time-limited." 

"- if I prepare spells for this constraint I can speak it most of my waking hours. That might just be the best thing to do here; it's not like I'll want to be using my third-circle spells conspicuously anyway."

"I think not, no. They are very conspicuous to mage-sight even when the effects are not as visible. Are any of your more powerful spells necessary for crafting magic items, or is that separate?" 

"Separate. When I craft it'll also probably look weird to your Detect Magic, but that can be the - Wild Gift."

Altarrin nods. "People will certainly try to watch you and replicate it. Which I suspect is not doable with mage-gift, but - actually, what are the prerequisites in your world for learning wizardry? If there actually were a way to imitate it with local magic, we could scale this project faster." 

"Anyone smart enough - and certainly anyone you'd find notably clever is smart enough -- can learn to be a wizard. It takes months to years to get anywhere with it, but people do get there. It'd - make it pretty clear the magic's from another world, though, it's really nothing like yours."

....He should have asked that question much earlier. It's clearly incredibly important – maybe one of the most important aspects here, second only to the bare fact of Carissa with her alien magic appearing here at all – if they can teach other people how to do this, even if none of them are as good as Carissa is, then they can scale... 

(If she's right that intelligence is the only prerequisite. It still might be the case that anyone from her world can learn it if they're smart enough, and that people from his world can't. They should test that.) 

- And, of course, they can't scale very far without making it incredibly obvious, including to his political enemies. It's a very frustrating constraint. (Especially since some of those 'enemies' wouldn't be, he thinks, if they had met under less adversarial circumstances...) 

"Noted," Altarrin says quietly. "I think that probably we should not open with teaching your magic widely, since you are right that it would draw too much attention. But if mages - or non-mages - here can learn it, that would be very important for future planning purposes, and - might be a reason to break with the Empire sooner so that we can operate with less interference." 

Pause. 

"- Would you be willing to try to teach me? It need not be right now, necessarily, if it would take a long time to run that test, but it would be useful to know whether existing Gifts and experience with them - and mage-sight in particular - helps to learn it more quickly." 

please don't kill me even once you know enough you could reconstruct the rest...

She isn't pathetic. She just smiles. "If you'd like. Unless Gifts help a lot it would take weeks to months, so perhaps not right now, but when we have the time." 

Altarrin doesn't feel that practiced at reading Carissa's body language, and isn't sure if she's actually tense or if he's looking at noise and seeing a signal that isn't really there, but either way he's not inclined to push it. He very badly wishes he knew what she was thinking right now. 

(Also he's registering a quiet internal prediction that if it turns out he can learn her magic at all, it definitely won't take weeks.) 

"That makes sense, and - this is definitely not urgent. In the meantime, our story is that you are from one of the southeastern minor city-states, were a student at a secretive mage-school, and have a Wild Gift that gives you language-translation abilities, and - maybe we should claim a separate Wild Gift for creating one-time-use artifacts to imitate known mage-techniques? Since I think our mage-scholars would find it less believable that you have a single Gift that can do both. I realize that does not cover everything you can actually do, but are there any other spells you would need to cast in un-shielded locations?" 

"Can I claim the language-translation comes from one of the imitation-items? And I don't expect I'll have to cast more spells, but if I do, hey, I imitated a lot of items from my secretive mage-school."

"- Hmm. That might work? We should have some 'items' on-hand that show up to mage-sight that you can be holding when you cast spells, but I think that is sufficient, your magic looks strange enough that - at least given the fact that I have made an obvious claim on you," and he ducks his head briefly, makes a faintly apologetic face, "no one will ask further questions."

Pause.

"If that seems workable, I can prepare some 'items' fairly quickly - I am guessing you would rather not use up your spells on it? I know artifact techniques that no one in the Empire would recognize, I can make things that at least surface-level resemble your other magic items. Unless you have a better idea?" 

"- no, that sounds good." She's baffled that he seems - what emotion is that even - like there's something there that gives him pause - 

Then they can pick out a tiny city-state on the map! Altarrin ends up suggesting Aksell – a small but unusually densely-settled polity, landbound, only a few hundred miles south of the current Eastern Empire's borders, but separated by enough stateless territory mainly settled by nomadic tribes that the Empire has no particular trade relationship with it. If anyone gets curious enough to check the court archives, the records mention Aksell as having a number of semi-secretive mage-schools, and with a reputation that (to Eastern Empire sensibilities) hints at the existence of more genuinely-secret schools. 

Relative to the Eastern Empire, it's a very religious place, with a couple of different competing temple orders. Altarrin very much doubts that anyone would think to ask Carissa which god she worshipped, and even if they did she could claim that her particular mage-school wasn't affiliated, but if she wants to be definitely prepared for questions, she should probably have some kind of opinion on the main orders? 

The most popular one, according to his most-recent 150-year-old records, worships Anraethae, who - like Vkandis - is a fire-associated god, but who seems overall less interventionist, and definitely less violently so. There are a lot of philosophical texts about the purifying nature of fire, including (one assumes metaphorically) in a spiritual sense. Their priests believe strongly in redemption, for any beings including the more intelligent types of Abyssal demons. Altarrin's notes mentioned, via a second-hand rumor, that the order possesses a particular mage-ritual that can bind even the most powerful elemental and Abyssal entities into vulnerable material-plane bodies, so that the temple priests can work with them and convince them to repent.

...To be clear, Altarrin isn't sure this ritual exists, though it sounds feasible in theory, and he has no idea if this has ever actually happened and somewhat doubts it. It sounds like a very questionable idea. 

"- sure. I - I won't be drawing that god's attention if I say I follow them or anything?"

"No. Especially because we are very far outside of Anraethae's territorial remit, but - I think even if you were in Aksell, our world's gods do not have enough attention, or even the right sensory capacities, to notice when or where mortals mention them. Are your world's gods able to notice that?" 

"I don't think so, but it might depend on the god. And - I don't know how much of what they told us in Cheliax was true. A lot of gods noticed what we were doing to Keltham, but they were - paying extra attention, I assume. Anraethae. From the description it could be Sarenrae but I don't know if She operates here. ...or if Her followers here have an afterlife, which is what's important."

Altarrin goes very still. 

"- That would potentially be very important, if true," he says after a long moment. "I - would assume that if one of your world's gods can access Velgarth, all of them can, even if some do not prioritize it." A slight frown. "I am not sure how to test it safely and - without attracting Sarenrae's attention in the case where you are right. Do you have any ideas?" 

"....not really? I don't know much about her. ....she smote a city once and her folliowers admit it though it's really weird behavior for a Good god, usually they're all 'ohhh, I can't kill people even if it advances my interests, that'd be mean!' ...they went to Hell. At least in Cheliax's telling of it. If She has a holy book here I could look for similarities."

Another frown. "I have not heard Anraethae to have done that exactly, but - I would not say it rules out that Anraethae and Sarenrae are the same god. ...Anraethae is generally referred to as male, but I am not sure what gender even corresponds to, for gods, so cannot say that rules it out either. Anyway, I will locate holy texts for you - and it may be worth having you read the holy texts of orders that worship other gods as well, in case there are other obvious correspondents - but it may have to wait until tomorrow, I do not have any in this records cache and certainly the court libraries will not have them." 

- nod. "It's also possible that it is Sarenrae in some sense but She still isn't getting her followers to Nirvana. Also I don't even want Nirvana except in comparison to the local mess."

Nod. 

"Is there anything else we ought go over before I Gate us back? I can take ten minutes to make you some imitation magical artifacts, but I am concerned that the longer we delay, the more likely it becomes that someone will be suspicious."